Modeling and performance analysis of UAV-aided millimeter wave cellular networks with stochastic geometry

UAV-aided cellular networks, millimeter wave (mm-wave) communications and multi-antenna techniques are viewed as promising components of the solution for beyond-5G (B5G) and even 6G communications. By leveraging the power of stochastic geometry, this paper aims at providing an effective framework for modeling and analyzing a UAV-aided heterogeneous cellular network, where the terrestrial base stations (TBSs) and the UAV base stations (UBSs) coexist, and the UBSs are provided with mm-wave and multi-antenna techniques. By modeling the TBSs as a PPP and the UBSs as a Matern hard-core point process of type II (MPH-II), approximated but accurate analytical results for the average rate of the typical user of both tiers are derived through an approximation method based on the mean interference-to-signal ratio (MISR) gain. The influence of some relevant parameters is discussed in detail, and some insights into the network deployment and optimization are revealed. Numerical results show that some trade-offs are worthy of being considered, such as the antenna array size, the altitude of the UAVs and the power control factor of the UBSs.